How Safe are Public Pools?

Good analysis there, Soz.



So, long ago, when I started really learning to swim at age 37 at the Y, I just about immediately caught a bang up cold with follow up bronchitis (still smoked then). I blamed the pool or the changing room, whatever. In retrospect, rhinoviruses go around and come around. I think I've had them all by now, so have gotten relatively virus free in recent decades. Kidding, I know that at least flu viruses are evermore wreaking changes.

But re pool safety and changing room safety in general, I've read bunches of stuff on the prevalence of mrsa (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) at, say, football locker rooms, and have read about subsequent rules changes to help deal with that.) So, what, wash your hands, babes..

Yeah, the on break lifeguard would be culpable, too. I think maybe third -- if she actually was on break and not just brushing off the kid -- but definitely should have done more.

This photo of Marie Joseph in the pool (on June 26th) explains some of the "murk" issue -- you can barely see the kid's bodies under water.


http://beta.news.yahoo.com/mom-boy-begged-mass-guards-aid-sinking-woman-151605072.html

I had been thinking the murk was more like brown, this looks pool-colored just with a lot of particles in it.

Did the 6 posters who voted this post down do so because the picture is of Joseph still alive? There's a picture of her bloated dead body as it looked when it surfaced in the night in the press if you'd rather have verisimilitude - but you'll have to look for it, such tastes are too weird for me.

I voted it down because I found your characterization of that picture as "scary" to be distasteful at best.

Strictly in accordance with the facts, though. Well - even if she had been beautiful in life she couldn't have looked good after 2 days underwater.

You know, I've seen this picture and to me it doesn't say anything about the actual appearance of the water.

Could have been the angle, where the sun was positioned in the sky, the quality of the camera, glare, etc.
Look at the girl in the upper left of the pciture. You can't even see the top of her swimsuit or arm 1/2 inch below the surface. I can believe that people would be swimming in water that you couldn't see 1/2 inch below the surface.
To me, it looks #1 like that picture is overexposed.

I've read where someone (city official, park guy, I don't know) said he couldn't see the regulated sized black disk at the bottom of the pool.

However, in the aerial picture I posted before, you can make out the swim lane lines.
When was that picture taken, after the body was found? If so, how much later did the inspector make his vision test? Could the water have grown murkier over the time the pools been closed, not being tended to maybe?

I haven't read anything re the layout and varying depths of the pool. How deep is that deepest visable swim lane in my picture.

You can't see the peoples bodies/legs in this picture, yet you can see swim lanes from above in the other one.

ok, I was just watching this slightly over 2 minute video, that is showing another pool, one that is well run.

Linking this to the accuracy of the picture of Joseph in the pool, watch the last few moments of this video.
This is supposed to be a clean pool, yet right around the 2:00 mark, it shows a couple of girls going underwater. Once they are off the surface you can't see them nearly as well.
Even more telling....watch the last few seconds. It's showing the lifeguard looking over the pool, there's a small black dot on the surface. that's someones head. You can't see the body at all. It's obviously due to glare or the angle, since you can tell in other parts of the video the water is clean.

Here's the link...

http://www.wnep.com/wnep-mon-lifeguards-in-stroudsburg-react-to-tragedy-20110701,0,7194042.story

Not exactly sure what is relevant about how this Stroudsburg PA pool looks and is run. I feel it's water visibility is hardly relevant but maybe your not saying that it is? When someone is checking a pool (for bodies), can one assume theyre moving around '(and mercy) even going around the pool inspecting from different angles? Shouldn't they go into the water at some point like at start and end of each shift?

PA pool is not exceptional but follows the guidelines appropriately. Mass pool was exceptionally lax. There are standards of safety and common sense that appear to be ignored by Mass pool staffers. What seems clear so far (to me) that the Massachusetts pool just didn't follow proper procedures. As a result they put MANY people at risk. They didn't follow much common sense, either.

IMHO, common sense says (realizing this requires actual effort):
1. check water for cloudiness (whatever color/non color) and follow the visibility guidelines set down by regulations. If not passing, shut down the pool.
2. verify several times per day there is no one UNDER the water by visual under-water inspection (yes, the deep end too).
3. communicate (within staff and supervisor) any and all complaints of safety issues - even from small children.

The point I was making is that the picture of Joseph standing in the pool with a little girl in her arms is being put out, presumably to show people how cloudy the water was.

My showing that even a clean pool, having a picture taken at the right (or wrong) angle looks just as milky.

Meaning, as I was saying in my previous post, exactly how cloudy was the water on that day? You have pictures showing the water what I would consider rather clear, to showing it was looking like dozens of people didn't mind swimming in what looks like watery milk.

I'm personally not convinced the body could have been there for 2 days, with no one noticing.

ESPECIALLY the deep end.

In any event, this is a bad business all around.

I am wondering why the comment about Joseph's physical appearence? What is wrong with it? What is the relevance? She looks fine to me.

I understand about the water's milky appearnace, but the photo proves little if anything.

I have little doubt that the body could have gone unnoticed for 2 days. However, my thoughts and feelings are not relevant to what actually may have or DID happen.

Do you remember a movie named "Poltergeist" from back in the '80s? Most of it was funny rather than scary, but there was one scene I thought truly terrifying, the actress starring in the movie swimming in a pool at night and a dead body - looking like the spitting image of the posted picture - suddenly surfacing next to her. Couldn't help remembering it - possibly unfairly to the deceased. And you're right about cloudy water concealing anything for days.

It seems very dangerous to me to allow a pool (especially a public pool) to become so cloudy that you can't see things 4' below the surface. I understand now why they closed all the other public pools in the area. And I'm surprised they allowed it to get that way in the first place.

Cloudy water isn't necessarily dirty - the pH may be unbalanced, but that's not dangerous, or there may be suspended particulates depending on the source. Water in which a dead body has been lying for days is dangerously full of bacteria, though, and even if chlorine is added to a pool it won't kill all of them.

As a photographer who has taken many images of water during the daytime, at a 45-degree-angle on a brightly lit (or bright but solidly overcast) summer day sky, you need a polarizer filter to 'see into' or below the water. Any body of water will show up with poor visibility under these conditions .

At the risk of repetition, how is the live photo of Joseph in any way connected or relevant? You've lost me. IMHO, there's nothing scary or unattractive about it or her. I've seen the movie Poltergeist and I'm stumped. Perhaps I'm just being dim and I need to raise my blood sugar. Time for my dinner.

Me too, Rags.

A few folks here really don't like blacks or their looks. I've not heretofore guessed this would be true re High Seas and am not sure on that, though it seems so from the comment.

Edits, I never saw Poltergeist. (Me? no way, I'm a film snot)

Backs off, I take High Seas comment was not about the woman's looks.

You have to see the scene in the pool - in its own way it's as iconic as the Psycho shower curtain. And the pretty little girl starring in "Poltergeist" died at age 12 from "septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream" - obviously no connection to the MA pool, but that's another mental association.

It's been a long time now that I miss a lot of cultural references by virtue of my movie choices, somewhat by the books I read, and that I stopped a lot of tv when I went back to school while still keeping up working in 1980 (no time, no time, never ever time). I did have some spasms of olympics watching, a few series, this and that. At the end, the early aughts, I kept my new very good tv for when my niece would visit, and when I moved, gave it to the fellow that helped me with my yard.

I have never, for example, watched Seinfeld.

I am a true dinosaur in velvet clothing.